Vsevolod Bashkuev Research Fellow, Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Division Ulan-Ude, Russia E-mail: [email protected] Work in progress. Please do not quote. “Based Upon Deeply Rooted Hostile Views…” Anti-Soviet Sentiments and Resistance among the Special Settlers in Buryat-Mongolia, 1940s-1950s Introduction Buryat-Mongolia, nowadays officially known as the Republic of Buryatia, is a large but thinly populated national autonomous subject of the Russian Federation situated east of Lake Baikal at the crisscrossing of Eurasian historical pathways. In terms of political geography, this region is a part of Russia’s Siberian federal district, but unlike its predominantly Russian neighboring areas, Buryatia is national-territorial autonomy of Buryats, natives of Southeast Siberia. The contemporary Buryats are descendants of the Mongolian tribal alliance forming in the lands around Lake Baikal in the period from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. They speak dialects of the Mongolian language, practice Tibetan Buddhism and share the nomadic traditional culture of the Mongols. Since the beginning of their national autonomy in May 1923, the Buryats formed distinct ethnic culture, intelligentsia, political elite and institutions creating a particular socio-cultural environment in the republic. This socio-cultural particularity is important in the context of this paper. In the 1940s – 1950s, the territory of Buryat-Mongolia became a place of exile for thousands of deportees from the western parts of the Soviet Union. Large contingents of exiles diluted the ethnic structure of the republic creating cultural and religious diversity. However, adaptation to an unusual geographical, climatic and cultural environment was a hard process. Not all deportees endured it. In some situations socio-cultural differences between their homelands and Buryat-Mongolia added bitterness to the exile experience through misunderstanding amplified manifold by the injustice of deportations, prejudice and trauma-induced non-conformism. The resulting denial of everything associated with Soviet reality frequently led people toward confrontation with the authorities. More often than not, such non-conformists ended up in prisons and GULAG labor camps. Yet in many more other cases national, cultural and religious differences smoothed out in the process of intercultural communication, which was a natural and integral component of survival strategy. The exiles learnt from the locals, received direct assistance as well as indirect support and sympathy that were often no less important than food or clothing. In the course of such intercultural contacts, the deportees developed their own peculiar perception of Soviet 2 reality in which the rank-and-file locals were often disassociated from communist practices of intimidation, suppression, brainwashing and control. As the title of this paper suggests, I will concentrate attention on the anti-Soviet sentiments, non-conformism and resistance among various deportees who lived in Buryat- Mongolia in the 1940s and 1950s. This part may form probably the richest chapter in a yet-to-be- written history of deportations in the USSR in general and Buryatia in particular. Thick volumes of the so-called “observation files” kept in the NKVD and party archives provide a solid proof of this viewpoint. It is only natural that resentment of the state policy formed such a profound part of deportee experience. They perceived deportations as, at the very least, unlawful acts of the Soviet dictatorship and expressed their discontent in a variety of common and uncommon ways. Those included escape, formation of underground cells and conspiring against the state, different “hostile comments”, boycotting of Soviet holidays, loan campaigns and other “rituals”, composing of anti-Soviet poems and songs, and many other less common manifestations. However, I should note that my goal is not in solely registering and interpreting the cases of such activities based on the archival documents, but also in attempting to delineate the anti- Soviet sentiments themselves. I would like to distinguish between cases where dissent only targeted communist practices, rituals and realities and instances when the deportees expressed negative judgments about the climate or geographical environment of Buryatia and, especially, xenophobic, nationalistic or racist views of the local population, traditions and religious practices. In doing so I will reconstruct images of the Soviet reality in the eyes of the deportees and images of Buryat-Mongolia and its peoples, compare them and determine whether and to which extent they overlapped. This reconstruction will assist in understanding the place and role of intercultural communication in the survival strategies of the deportees. The source base of this study mostly comprises archival documents unearthed during my work in the special funds group of the Information Center of Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Buryatia in 2001-2002 and National Archives of the Republic of Buryatia in 2002- 2010. Eyewitness accounts, interviews and questionnaires of surviving Lithuanian deportees currently residing in Buryatia are of special significance. They are specifically important when compared with the information from the MVD “observation files”. Both sources, excellent as they are, may display various personal biases. Cross-referencing these primary sources is an excellent opportunity to add objectivity to their critical analysis. Building up of the “special settler” population of Buryat-Mongolia, 1930s-1950s First large deportee contingents from the European part of the USSR arrived in Buryat- Mongolia during the collectivization period in the early 1930s. Victims of brutal dekulakization campaign, they received a status of “labor settlers”, lived in confined “labor settlements”, lacked 3 passports and freedom of movement and were essentially “second quality” people. In 1938, the total number of such deportees in the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR was 1.945 people. There were five “labor settlements” with the average population of 389 people each.1 During the war, the deportee population of the BMASSR sufficiently increased. On 28 August 1941, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR sanctioned total deportation of the Soviet Germans. It was a “preventive” measure by which Stalin and his lieutenants sought to neutralize any possibility of collaboration of the Soviet Germans with the invading Wehrmacht. The Soviet Germans found themselves in every remote corner of the USSR: Central Asia, Far East, Siberia, and the Arctic North. In 1942, there was a second wave of repressions against the already repressed Germans. Thousands of them were mobilized into the so-called “labor army”. The bulk of German deportees in Buryat-Mongolia were “trudarmeitsy”, or “labor army members”. In this status, they toiled at many enterprises in the republic, but most ended up at the Dzhida tungsten plant than belonged to the NKVD system. So large was the number of forced laborers there that the NKVD organized a labor camp named Dzhidlag on site. As of 1 June 1944, the number of German labor army members in the camp was 1.652 people. In addition, there were 828 repatriated Germans. During the war, they either willingly or unwillingly turned up in foreign countries. Upon their return to the USSR, they were exiled as special settlers. 2 At this point, it is crucial to explain the term “special settlers”. Legally, it was a unique status existent only in Stalin’s USSR. In this or that form, it appeared since the mass kulak deportations of the early 1930s. However, finally it crystallized only on 8 January 1945 in the Decree of the Soviet of the People’s Commissars of the USSR # 35 entitled “On the legal status of special settlers”. According to this decree, special settlers retained all rights and privileges of citizens of the Soviet Union except freedom of movement. They had to live in special settlements, which they could not leave without a special permission of a local NKVD commandant’s office. Unauthorized leave qualified as escape and was a criminal offense. All adult able-bodied special settlers had to work at the specially assigned workplaces. Usually this meant unqualified hard labor in agriculture, construction, fishing, mining or timber industry. All changes in the marital status or family composition (death, birth of a child, escape) were to be immediately reported to an NKVD commandant. At the same time, special settlers, unlike 3 GULAG inmates and “exile settlers”, retained full voting rights. 1 V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauka, 2003), p. 33. 2 L.P. Saganova, Spetspereselentsy-nemtsy v Buryatii (1941-1956 gg.). Avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata istoricheskikh nauk (Irkutsk, 2001), p. 14. 3 V.N. Zemskov, Op. cit., p. 120-121. 4 The old legal status of German deportees and labor army members, labor settlers (former kulaks) and other categories of non-GULAG forced laborers quickly changed to “special settlers”. The same happened with the “punished peoples”: Kalmyks, Karachai, Balkars, Chechens, Ingush and Crimean Tatars totally deported to Central Asia and Siberia in 1943-1944. In reality, however, the legal condition of each particular special settler contingent substantially differed from one another. In certain situations, the difference meant much more than just a juridical nuance. Later on, I will return